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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 5086 ..

MR PRATT (continuing):

Mr Hargreaves is on a mission to do something about that, but here we have a case where that situation has remained unresolved for a very long time.

Mr Speaker, let me refer to the fundamental cleanup services that we are supposed to be getting from government in suburbia, including the lack of vegetation and grass cleanup. Let me list some of these areas where there has been long-term neglect, despite repeated reporting by residents. I am listing here examples where residents have continually reported and asked for something to be done.

Along Athllon Drive in the Kambah region, there is long grass on both sides. On the back fences along Athllon Drive in the vicinity of Torrens, there is graffiti for hundreds of metres. It has been there for months. There is a public pathway running down across Harbison Crescent in Wanniassa. They have reported over six months the need to clean up the long grass in that particular pathway. It hasn't been done. On Longmore Crescent and Sulwood Drive, along the top of Wanniassa, they had to get out with their own contracted and hired mowing machines to cut that damn grass down. That is also a fire risk because that area is on the prevailing approach lines for fires.

The chicanes which the department has put in recently near the junction of Langdon Avenue and Adamson Crescent, Wanniassa, are inadequate; they are too tight. In fact what happens is they have become a magnet, again, to hoon drivers who find them a challenge to try to speed through so that they can broadside and fishtail their way through those. Residents in the area hear the squealing of tyres regularly in that area. Here is a classic case of poor services planning which has in fact created a problem rather than solving a problem.

Near Plunkett and Renwick streets in Chifley-the green area near the Chifley neighbourhood oval, running east along that green corridor-TransACT, having cut down trees, left them there for months. As far as I know, until four weeks ago, that still hadn't been cleaned up.

There is a dead-end in Clive Steele Avenue in Monash, which the residents have been asking to have closed off for months because the dead-end becomes an area for burnouts and fireworks. The residents have been calling to have that blocked off for over a year, but nothing has been done.

There has been a burnt out-car sitting in Hoddinott Street in Wanniassa for over two weeks. It is sitting in the gutter. In fact, the damn street looks like Baghdad. Perhaps we could arrange a sister city relationship with it.

Mr Speaker, Toohey Place in Wanniassa has no lights in it whatsoever; the lights do not work. In Longmore Street, Wanniassa, there is a broken footpath; it has been there for three months. No action has been taken. In Hoddinott Street, again, there is a large pothole; it has been there for five months. In Sachse Street, there is a junkyard; there is a property with five wrecked cars sitting there. It is an eyesore; it does not do the residents in that suburban area any credit; it does not do a damn thing for property values. It is an eyesore.

The list goes on. In Rischbieth Street, Gilmore, there is a neglected government house, which again is an eyesore for the residents of that street.

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